He asked me once, as we walked along the beach...through the light, filled with excitment at our newly conceived plan of destiny, filled with youth and joy and potency, "How long do you think you will live, Ray?"
He snapped me out of my reverie. My mind raced back from the sea blue/sky blue horizon line, where it was doing a tightrope dance, and tried to lock itself into what it had just heard. It couldn't.
"What?!" was all i could say. Shocked.
You know. How old will you be when...you...well, when you die?"
What a question! We were just pups. Just starting out. The future was infinite, and even then, at that fecund moment in time, at the just realized conception of the Doors...even then he was aware of his own mortality.
"ohh, God...probably...uhh," I stammered, trying to project myself from that golden day into a distant future. "Probably...uhh, like...eighty-seven."
"whoa, not me, man. I'll never make it that far." And he spoke matter-of-factly, without any fear in his voice. :I see myself like a shooting star. You knoqw, like when your out at night, at the beach with a bunch of people, and somebody jumps up and says, 'HEY, look! A shooting star!' And everybody stops talking. And they see it, and say 'Ahh!' And it holds then for a brief moment...and then it goes out."
And he looked at me with his deep and trusting eyes. His wise and prescient eyes...
"Thats how i see myself, Ray."---Excerpt from "Light My Fire:My life with the Doors" By Ray Manzarek
Thats how i see myself too...
